Final project: read the following information carefully

FINAL PROJECT: read the following information carefully

Due:  send the assignment to my email, not to UR Courses, no later than 6 p.m. [Regina time] on Monday Dec. 7 in order to receive a grade and to avoid a final course grade of NP. 

Send your assignment when you are 100% sure you are finished.  I will accept and evaluate one email response only, not multiple emailed responses that are sent later with added information or corrections.

In order to adhere to the deadlines created by the university and the English department, there are no extensions or late assignments allowed.  The Dec. 7 deadline applies to all students, including international and special needs students. You are advised not to leave the assignment until the last minute lest you forget about it, or are rushed, or have computer problems, etc.

Questions about the project must be sent no later than 1 p.m.  Dec.4.  Note that I, and any other source of help, are very limited as to what questions we can answer, since one of the goals of the assignment is for you to show your proofreading skills.  For example, we can go over what a comma splice is; we cannot tell you if a specific sentence in the essay is a comma splice or not.  We can remind you what is needed in a good thesis statement; we cannot tell you if the essay has a good or weak thesis statement.  We cannot proofread or pre-evaluate your paragraphs.

Goal:  The project is to allow you to demonstrate that you understand the elements that are required to produce an acceptable academic essay based on what we have covered this semester, and that you have improved your writing and reading skills.  You are required to undergo a thorough evaluation of a sample student’s essay, which has been posted in two formats:  Microsoft word and PDF.  I recommend that you print out a copy of the student’s essay.  It is very difficult to proofread on a computer screen.

YOUR requirements for the assignment are the following.  There are six separate parts needed for your response.  Please present your answers clearly so they can be easily understood and evaluated.

Part One: make a list regarding the requirements for the student’s essay.  The requirements are given below.  Has the essay met all of the requirements?   If not, which ones are missing or are incorrect? No lengthy explanations are required.

Part Two: for each paragraph, list the types and the number of grammatical errors and unacceptable writing errors you find. 

For example–

1. In paragraph #1 there are three sentence fragments…

2.    in paragraph #2 there are three spelling errors and four apostrophe errors

           and so on

Part Three: by examining the essay as a whole, find one example of each of the following types of errors; then correct the sentence in which the error is found, without changing the meaning of the sentence.  Indicate by the paragraph # where the error occurs.

Comma splice

Run-on sentence

Sentence fragment

Apostrophe

Spelling

Passive voice

Subject-verb agreement

Pronoun reference

WTA

Tone:

  Informal diction

  point of view

Quotation use

Part Four: for the thesis statement and for each of the six paragraphs, identify and list 3-5 specific weaknesses in terms of their content [this is about the ideas that are presented in each paragraph, not how they are being presented in terms of grammar/expression]. No lengthy explanations are required.

Part Five: Choose one of the four middle paragraphs and rewrite it as an example of acceptable university-level writing in a formal, unified paragraph of 6-8 sentences.  The content/analysis must be based on one of the points raised in the paragraph and it must be related to the topic assigned to the student.  Start the paragraph with an underlined topic sentence.

Part Six: In another paragraph of 6-8 sentences, produce your own response based on a point not raised in the student’s essay. You are writing a formal, unified middle paragraph that needs to answer this topic: 

  Which ghost has the greatest significance on Scrooge’s transformation and why?

The paragraph needs to start with an underlined topic sentence.  It can be based on your choice of any ghost in the novel.  If you choose one of the ghosts that is discussed in the student’s essay, your paragraph must analyze a different idea than anything he wrote about.